Range Day!

It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve been out to the range, but I made it today. As I’ve written previously, my focus right now is on the standing position. My reasoning is that the fundamentals needed to get tighter groups in the standing position will also show themselves in the other positions.

I arrived at about 11 AM. It was cloudy skies, about 70 degrees, and a steady 6 kt wind from my 3:00. I elected to stick to the 50 yard range today, and really stuck to the 25 yard line for most of it. Bearing in mind the principles of a good practice session, I spent more time reviewing, preparing, and dry firing than actually firing live ammunition. In all, I spent about an hour and forty five minutes on the range, and expended 40 rounds of ADI 69gr SMK. I stuck to the 20″ musket (as usual) and the FTW multipurpose sling.

I started off with a simple Appleseed Red Coat target, firing one shot for each of the five silhouettes. Standing for the 100, kneeling for the 200, sitting for the 300, and prone for the 400. I also shot prone for the ‘shingle.’ I start off this way to see how I do “cold” from each of these positions, and let me know if I should go back and review anything. Standing and kneeling where clean shots through the middle of the target. Sitting and prone hit the upper left edges of their respective targets, and I put the final shot right through the middle of the shingle.

With this in mind, I fired five more shots each from sitting and prone at NRA 50 yard targets. With sitting, the first and last shots were high left and high/right, respectively. I called both of them, as I did not settle into my NPOA and did not focus on my breathing. Score for the sitting was 48/50 with 1x.

With the prone, i fell into a good rifleman’s cadence and broke the shot at the bottom of each breath cycle. Final score was 50/50 with 3x.

After this warmup, I spent the rest of the day practicing standing with AQT scaled targets. At 25 yards, I was able to keep 80% of my shots within the ‘5’ zone, and several of those in the ‘V.’ I was originally keeping 100% of them in the ‘5,’ but got too excited and lost focus for several shots- so I have to mark myself down for that.

Some notes for today:

Using the 400 meter mark on my Elcan (zeroed at 100 m) is just about dead on for 25 yards (as you can see from above).

I find that I am more comfortable shooting from standing if I collapse the stock in one notch to ‘3,’ but all other positions remain best shot from position ‘4.’

I have to trust my rhythm. It is not possible to perfectly hold the rifle still in standing, but if I can keep my “sway” consistent, and break my shot at a consistent time during that sway cycle, I can produce tight groups.

I finished up the day doing another set from sitting on a scaled AQT target, without a sling. The result was a 50/50 with 9 shots (out of 10) in the ‘V’ circle. Not a bad way to finish up.